


Make It Work

by dreamiesficfest, yourobdtst



Series: Dear Dream - Dreamies Fic Fest (Third Wave) [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, Makeup, Youtuber AU, assorted cameos from the rest of the dreamies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 15:58:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18702820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiesficfest/pseuds/dreamiesficfest, https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourobdtst/pseuds/yourobdtst
Summary: Prompt number: #DD049“It’s almost two o’clock, Mark,” Donghyuck coos. “We have to stream soon.”“Duckie,” Mark groans into the pillow. “What do you mean ‘we’?”





	Make It Work

**Author's Note:**

> Notes from the Author: this was such fun to write - so much fun, in fact, it ended up way longer than i originally intended and exceeding my original goal for word count. prompter, thank you for your idea, i love markhyuck and i love makeup and i swear you tailored this prompt just for me, i'm so happy i got to write it! i hope i do it justice. also, the fact that while i was in the process of writing, we actually got a markhyuck live??? some coincidences are too good. thank you markhyuck for my life. and also thank you mods, for running this fest! i hope everyone is having a good time, i'm so happy to be a part of it, and i hope you, reader, enjoy!!!

A piece of information that gets lost among the clutter of moving your entire life across the ocean: changing time zones is  _ hard _ .

 

Donghyuck was ready for a lot - for the culture difference, for the language barrier, for missing everyone he would be leaving behind in Korea. Mark helped, more than Donghyuck necessarily admits. Mark and his impromptu English lessons for the months leading up to their move to Vancouver. Mark and his bubbly excitement, that Donghyuck so loved to see, at being able to call his childhood city  _ home _ again, this time with his boyfriend. Mark and his love and adoration and understanding, that Donghyuck was uprooting his whole life to move with him. Mark and his hands to hold and shoulders to cry on and the million memories between them that made everything worth it.

 

They make things work: it’s what they’ve always done. When they were little, and Mark was the strange new foreign kid everyone had their eyes on, Donghyuck made it work - made him feel normal, immediately adopting him into his circle of friends and teasing the shy laughter out of him from day one. When they got older, and Donghyuck had to miss class for his theatre rehearsals, Mark made it work by writing all his notes out twice, a copy for himself and Donghyuck. The summer before university started and Mark, a blushing wreck, tried to stutter through his confession, Donghyuck made his barely intelligible stammering work, and had shut him up with a hand in his hair and their lips pressed together, their first kiss a long time coming. 

 

And when Mark wanted to move back to Vancouver to finish his degree, and to take up an offer for internship at a music studio an old friend had connections with, they talked about making it work - phone calls and Skype chats and thousands upon thousands of texts, until Donghyuck decided just how badly he wanted it to work, and decided he was moving with Mark. 

 

Mark’s always had a lucky streak, in life - and that streak includes finding Donghyuck.

 

Though, they aren’t perfect; nor are they perfectly compatible. A lot of the time, they’re both  _ busy _ . But they make it work: when Donghyuck has a video to film, Mark lays low, runs errands, and doesn’t disturb him until it’s time to edit and Donghyuck asks for his help with the software. When Mark spends all day at school, and late nights at the recording studio pulling long hours for his internship, hoping and praying it will pay off when he graduates, Donghyuck is the one around the house, tidying and cooking because he knows Mark has about ten minutes to eat after coming home before exhaustion takes over and he crashes on their bed. It’s easy enough to take care of your overworked boyfriend when you set your own hours, which is exactly what Donghyuck has the privilege to do - except for Saturdays.

 

Saturdays, when he livestreams. He’s new to it, it’s still a little odd to get feedback and comments from his viewers in real time, but he loves not having to edit a video, and being able to leave every one of his quirks and anecdotes for them to laugh at. It’s why they follow him after all - he’s funny. They like his makeup, of course, and his tutorials. They like his fashion and they  _ lose it _ every time he talks about Mark (even more so when Mark makes an appearance), but at his core, he’s funny, and they like to watch him. They like to keep up with his life.

 

His moving vlogs are still some of his highest viewed - from packing, to shipping everything across the ocean, boarding the plane and setting foot in their apartment for the first time together, Donghyuck had managed to film nearly every moment of it, and the viewers had gone crazy for it. He’d kept the move a secret up until it was really time to do it, and those videos were the most any of them had ever seen of Mark all at once - part of him gets a little territorial over how much they love Mark, damn it, this is  _ his _ channel, but he was just so happy to share such a big change to his life he couldn’t really get annoyed. Plus, the advice many of them offered about moving so far away from home was something he really did take to heart. Mark could only help with so much - he gained a lot from the little family he’s built online over the years. 

 

He was ready to move - equipped with his channel, and his Mark, he was ready for such a change in his life.

 

What Donghyuck was  _ not _ ready for, however, was that even six months post-move, he  _ still _ hasn’t been able to adjust his internal clock to wake up before noon.

 

Granted, he was never good at waking up at reasonable times even back in Korea. As soon as he graduated and his makeup channel took off, and he didn’t need to follow any strict schedules anymore, he gave up entirely on even being out of bed before two in the afternoon. He’s long since perfected the routine of washing up and getting dressed and out the door in under fifteen minutes, and he uses that talent to its full extent just to stay in bed as long as he possibly can. He sets alarms for an hour before he’s set to leave, knowing full well that he’s just going to snooze it every five minutes until he literally has no time.

 

He doesn’t set alarms on Saturdays - a bold move, considering how many times he’s been late for his scheduled 2p.m. stream, but Mark drags his body into their bed so late on Friday nights he doesn’t have the heart to wake him up any earlier than need be. When Donghyuck wakes naturally, and finally cracks his eyes open, it’s to the sight of sunlight filtering into their bedroom through the curtains, liquid and soft. Everything in this city is washed in a faint shade of blue - it’s one of his first impressions that has stuck with him ever since -  and even the sunlight has a strange, watery feel to it. It would be serene, if it didn’t grate on Donghyuck’s tired eyes as he squints at his nightstand clock. The time read half-past noon, and he groans quietly, wishing it were earlier so he would have the luxury of falling back asleep for a bit longer. No such luck today. Today is streaming day, and today, he’s got an idea for something special. 

 

He pulls himself out of bed slowly, making his way to the small en suite bathroom, mindful of Mark and his gentle breathing where he’s curled up, fast asleep. He looks adorable, mouth open slightly as his breath puffs out against Donghyuck’s pillow, because Mark is an unrelenting cuddler who can never stay on his side of the bed. He really must have gotten home late last night, because he’s still wearing the rumpled hoodie he wore yesterday, didn’t pull it off before crawling into bed, didn’t even take off his flashy rings he insists make him look cooler in front of the artists as he mixes their songs. Obviously, he didn’t even attempt to wash his face last night, and Donghyuck’s ten step morning and night routine shudders at the very thought.

 

That’s the first step to streaming day - a clean face. Most of his streams centre around just doing makeup live and chatting instead of editing it all down for an upload, and the one he has planned for today is no different. He doesn’t have to worry about makeup, but he does have to worry about looking okay with  _ no _ makeup.

 

Donghyuck lathers his foaming cleanser in his hands, scrutinizing his skin in the mirror. His new toner has been fading some of his old spots like magic, and the sheet mask he did the night before cleared up that weird dry patch on his forehead and worked some wonders plumping the skin of his cheeks and making them glow, hydrated and radiant. He hopes the same will still be true under the harsh light of his ring light, but he knows it’s much less forgiving. It’s fine - that’s what his eye depuffing gel and anti-irritation spot clearing cream is for. And foundation. He can’t forget foundation.  _ God _ , he hopes Mark doesn’t forget foundation. 

 

He’s efficient and methodical with his skincare - massaging cleanser into his pores, gentle wipes of toner soaked pads and pats of essence into his cheeks, his favourite brightening serum. He swipes a light tea tree oil and aloe gel onto his areas of redness, tries to calm them, then smoothes on a generous layer of moisturizer. He pats his eye cream on with his ring finger. He considers his entire shelf of sunscreens, and settles on one with a light SPF, he doesn’t really intend to spend much time outside today.

 

He dresses quietly, out of consideration for Mark, even though he knows Mark could sleep through an earthquake. He only changes out of his sleep shirt, doesn’t bother taking off his old, ragged sweatpants - no one will be able to see them in the video frame underneath his table, and he’s nothing without valuing comfort and practicality. Why force himself into jeans, when instead, he could just not do that? This is why Donghyuck is glad his hobby-turned-job doesn’t take him out of the house often.

 

He pulls, out of his and Mark’s shared closet, a blue Hawaiian print button up that he suspects is actually Mark’s, but Mark wears almost nothing but hoodies and sweaters most of the time, and they live together, so what’s Mark’s is also Donghyuck’s now too. It’s fine though - Mark will never admit it, but Donghyuck knows he likes how his clothes hang  _ just _ slightly too big on Donghyuck’s shoulders, and how the sleeves of his sweaters fall over Donghyuck’s hands. Mark’s a sucker for Donghyuck, and - though Donghyuck will never admit  _ this _ \- the reverse applies as well.

 

As Donghyuck buttons his shirt, he hears Mark idly mumbling in his sleep - singing, soft and slurred, whatever he must have been tweaking last night at the studio. That’s a good sign, it shows Mark isn’t too deeply asleep, and when it comes times for Donghyuck to wake him, he won’t put up too much of a fight.

 

With soft steps, Donghyuck slides out of the bedroom and into the office that they converted into his filming room. His camera and all his lights are already set up, just need to be flicked on, his laptop booted and hooked up, stream time set and timer counting down. His makeup is housed in small dressers surrounding his vanity table, his most used products littered across the top among jars of brushes and his mirror. He yanks open drawer after drawer, dumping the contents of his small organizational baskets onto the table top, making jumbles of single eyeshadows, lipsticks, concealers, with no finesse at all. He pulls out his stacks of palettes and drops them onto the table too. Honestly, the harder it all is for Mark, the more fun he suspects he’ll have with this stream. 

 

By the time he’s spilling loose onto the table the last basket of shimmer eyeshadow pencils, the timer on his laptop screen tells him he’s got fifteen minutes to rouse Mark and get him camera ready, which, knowing Mark’s own love for the snooze button, is cutting a little bit close. When he enters their bedroom again, the sunlight is swimming across the bed, and Mark has the covers pulled over his head.

 

Donghyuck yanks them back. Mark grunts.

 

“Good morning!” Donghyuck doesn’t even shout, but Mark groans softly anyways, turning to hide his face from the light in the pillow.

 

“Hey,” Donghyuck tries again, this time crawling across the bed and on top of Mark, smacking a wet kiss to his exposed neck. Mark tiredly makes a disgusted noise and weakly tries to shove him off. “It’s time to get up. We have plans today!”

 

“No, we don’t.” Mark mutters, but it comes out muffled and barely audible.

 

“It’s almost two o’clock, Mark,” Donghyuck coos. “We have to stream soon.”

 

“ _ Duckie _ ,” Mark groans into the pillow. “What do you mean  _ we _ ?”

 

“You’re streaming with me today, Marcus.” That is not Mark’s name and Donghyuck knows it. But  _ Duckie _ is also not  _ his _ name, no matter how often Mark calls him that or how fast it makes his heart race. “Boyfriend does my makeup challenge. I have everything laid out for you to, uh.” He has to resist snorting. “For you to try your best.”

 

Mark finally cracks his eyes open, barely, his entire face still scrunched up and mushed into the pillow. There’s some crusty bits dried into the corners of his eyes. It’s kind of gross. Donghyuck loves him so much.

 

“I know literally nothing about what you actually do with all your makeup stuff, you know that right?” Mark mutters.

 

“I’m completely aware, yes.”

 

“And you want me to do your makeup for you?”

 

“That’s the idea of the challenge, yes.”

 

Mark stares at him blankly. Donghyuck smiles back, completely unconcerned. 

 

“I think that’s a bad idea.” Mark says, finally.

 

“Good thing it doesn’t matter what you think!” Donghyuck squirms on top of Mark, shaking him and the sleep out of his body. “I already told them -” his subscribers “- that you’re doing it, so, sorry!” He’s not sorry.

 

Mark doesn’t even respond, just worms an arm out from under the covers and over his eyes.

 

Donghyuck leans back, slaps the general area of where Mark’s butt looks like it is underneath the fluffy comforter. He must hit right on target, because Mark immediately yelps and blushes.

 

“Up!” Donghyuck actually shouts this time. “Stream starts soon. Don’t be late!” He scurries off the bed and back into his filming room before Mark can even try to argue his way out of it, sets about using his last few minutes to drag an extra chair - one of the stools from their kitchen - into the room onto his set for Mark to sit on, and fine tune some last minute details.

 

Mark slouches in and dumps himself blearily onto the extra chair Donghyuck added next to his normal makeup stool, making it with less than three minutes until the stream is scheduled to launch. Donghyuck has the resolution quality set, delay calibrated, camera focused. He checks himself in the viewfinder one last time, because it’s important - the ring light truly is unforgiving, so he can see the truth here, that his skin really is getting better, it wasn’t just some trick of the terrible bathroom lighting. His bangs are tousled nicely, shiny and curly across his forehead, actually behaving for once. He looks good. He  _ feels _ good. 

 

Mark, on the other hand, looks like an absolute mess. He hasn’t bothered to tame his bed head. He rolled out of the sheets in the same hoodie he wore yesterday and then  _ slept in _ , good God. He still hasn’t wiped the crusty bits out of the corners of his eyes, but they’re hidden now behind the wide circle frames of his glasses. He’s squinting, eyes still having not fully adjusted to being open, let alone to the bright lights of Donghyuck’s filming set. He’s a mess. He is a  _ mess _ and Donghyuck is  _ perfection _ , and it’s alright, they’ll make it work. 

 

“Ready to go?” Donghyuck leans forward to adjust where he’s placed the laptop, keeping it just slightly in frame of the shot, close enough that he’ll be able to read comments and reply to them. The little preview of him beside Mark in the bottom corner of the screen follows his motion just a few seconds later. He’s ready. Mark, not so much.

 

He’s pouting at the table, slouched over. He’s sitting on his hands and bouncing his leg nervously. “What  _ is _ all this? I didn’t even know you owned so much makeup.”

 

“Save it for the stream, they’ll love it.” Donghyuck dismisses him, watches the clock count down to the start of the stream. “You know what you’re doing, right?”

 

Mark yawns. “Wrong.”

 

The timer begins to count down the final minute. “It’s like a  _ challenge _ ,” Donghyuck explains hurriedly. “You’re my boyfriend and you don’t know anything about all  _ this _ ,” he gestures broadly to the tabletop littered with products. “So you’re going to do my makeup like how I normally would do my own and it’s going to be funny.”

 

Mark blinks. And then blinks again. “Donghyuck,” he says slowly. “What the hell?”

 

“It’ll be fun, we’ll have a good time,  _ they _ will have a good time!” He waves a hand at the laptop, at the vague idea of the people on the other side of that computer who will be watching them. “Just think of a  _ look _ I’ve worn before that you remember and try to recreate it.”

 

Mark blushes immediately, surprisingly, and Donghyuck is so caught off guard by the suddenness of it - he wasn’t even  _ trying _ to make fun of him this time - that he can’t even summon up a sarcastic remark about it before the timer ticks away the final seconds.

 

The webpage on his laptop auto-reloads, stream going live. Donghyuck busies himself with organizing the mess he, admittedly, carelessly dumped onto the desk, trying his best to sort it for his dear, clueless boyfriend. He shoves all of the eyeshadow in a pile, sorts the lipstick tubes from the eyeliner, tries to put his primer in an obvious spot in front of his foundation because he  _ really _ doesn’t want his skin to face the trauma of Mark slathering foundation on his bare pores. Mark watches him with sleepy eyes, utterly lost. Maybe just zoning out.

 

Donghyuck slams a jar full of brushes onto the table right in front of him, and Mark jumps. He’s definitely zoning out. Donghyuck tries to smile reassuringly at him, but he thinks it comes out a little sinister, because Mark doesn’t look any less out of his depth, his pout deepening. 

 

Donghyuck turns to the camera, discreetly checks the viewer count on his laptop screen. It’s already in the triple digits, and quickly climbing. He feels a growing warmth inside him, always does when he gets to see the love and support of complete strangers made tangible like this. It really does make him impossibly happy that he gets to do this; that people actually want to watch him and all his self-indulgent videos he uses as an excuse to show off his own handsome face - and also Mark, he can’t even pretend that he doesn’t see how much his subscribers love Mark. But it’s mostly about his own handsome face. He doesn’t consider himself particularly popular, since he’s certainly not landing any brand deals any time soon, but his subscribers and the people who watch him let him have his fun, laugh at his jokes, encourage his eccentrics, and really, he thinks that’s all the popularity he needs. 

 

He loves doing this - he really,  _ really _ does.

 

“Hello everyone!” Donghyuck chirps brightly to the camera lens, and waits. And sighs.

 

“Mark, say hello,” he mutters.

 

“Oh! Uh, yeah, hi.” Mark smiles, waving dopily at the camera. “What’s up everyone?”

 

“You’ve probably seen the title of the stream today, I  _ finally _ got Mark to agree to stream with me again -”

 

“That’s  _ not _ true,” Mark interjects. The comments are already rolling in, Donghyuck can see them popping up, rapidly replacing each other, faster than he can read them. “He didn’t ask, he woke me up and dragged me out of bed and  _ forced  _ me to be here.”

 

“Harsh.” Donghyuck pouts. “New plan then, Mark gets blackheads tweezed out of his nose by skincare-competent boyfriend, that’s the new title of the stream.”

 

“Duckie, I literally cannot stress this enough,  _ no _ .”

 

“Then stop whining and tell everyone why you’re here today.” Donghyuck gestures to the camera, then scoots the laptop closer to try and read some comments.

 

Mark sighs heavily. “Guys,” he begins, and Donghyuck can’t help but smile. For as much as he tries to act shy about appearing on Donghyuck’s channel, Mark’s a natural at it - addressing the camera like he’s really talking to the viewers, talking to the viewers like  _ friends _ , letting himself loose to be funny and entertaining even when Donghyuck knows being on camera makes his heart pound with nerves. It’s a conversation they had ages ago, when Donghyuck asked him why he only wanted to  _ produce _ music, not  _ perform _ it.

 

“ _ You don’t get it because you’re happy being the face of something _ ,” Mark had explained. “ _ Your channel. But I’m happy being a small part of something bigger. I like projects. I like teams. You like attention _ .” He’d been teasing, he’s always teasing, and Donghyuck had shrieked, outraged,  _ so _ loudly at the accusation that Mark claimed he couldn’t hear for hours afterwards.

 

He hadn’t been wrong, though Donghyuck will never admit it - he does love the attention. Comments filter in, claiming they missed him, they love him, his skin is glowing, saying his relationship with Mark is ‘goals’. He preens. He loves it. Who wouldn’t?

 

“I don’t even know.” Mark continues, staring down at the clutter of Donghyuck’s entire makeup collection splayed out in front of him. “A challenge? Boyfriend does your makeup?”

 

“Yeah, you got it.” Donghyuck adjusts in his seat, directs his attention back to the lens. “I’m sure you guys have seen it going around the  _ beauty community _ ,” Mark snorts beside him. He knows how cheesy Donghyuck finds that title. “But in case you haven’t, a ton of bloggers have been, uh -  _ requesting _ that their clueless significant others do their makeup on camera, and you know, since they don’t know anything, it turns out pretty funny.”

 

“I know  _ some _ things,” Mark protests.

 

“Here,” Donghyuck tosses him a tube of pale green colour corrector, looks smugly at the camera. “Don’t look at the label. What’s that?”

 

“Weird coloured liquid lipstick,  _ boom _ .” Mark triumphantly throws it back onto the table amongst the mess. 

 

“Wrong!” Donghyuck shouts, and Mark’s entire face goes slack. “You get points for knowing what liquid lipstick is, though.” He turns to face Mark, whose face has gone from sleepy and vaguely overwhelmed to looking wide awake and completely incredulous. “Maybe you should take a second and,” he gestures over the products. “Familiarize yourself.”

 

Mark swallows heavily, hunching over the table and narrowing his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, good plan.”

 

Donghyuck giggles. “You know, maybe if you actually watched a single one of my videos that I work  _ so _ hard on, this wouldn’t be very difficult for you,” he taunts in the direction of the camera. “I literally make tutorials.”

 

“I watch your videos, Duckie, they’re great,” Mark mutters, squinting at the label of Donghyuck’s bottle of setting spray, then violently shaking it. He looks shocked at the sound it makes, almost like a spray paint can. 

 

Donghyuck leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. “Sounds fake, but okay.”

 

“I don’t really pay attention to the actual, like, makeup bits,” Mark’s pawing at his various foundations now. Donghyuck is scared no matter which one he ends up choosing - he just  _ knows _ Mark will end up using too much if he decides on a liquid, and odds are he’ll end up wiping it on with his fingers like an absolute  _ animal _ . His one powder foundation is too light for his skin, but Mark doesn’t know that, probably won’t be able to tell, and doesn’t know how to fix it with bronzer. Using a cushion would just be an excuse for him to whack at Donghyuck’s face with more force than strictly necessary.

 

“I mostly just watch them because, you know,” Mark pause, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. “It’s you.”

 

Donghyuck gapes at him for a moment, taken aback by the sincerity of it, but then remembers he’s on camera and recovers himself quickly. Mark is so rarely like this, especially in front of others; he keeps his heart tucked carefully away, and to hear him be so openly affectionate without even thinking - Donghyuck can feel that he’s blushing, and kind of wishes Mark would just hurry up and put way too much foundation on him, just to cover it up. He leans back into his laptop screen, can see that the viewers are reeling from that little comment as well: the screen is filled with a slew of heart emojis, requests for them to get married, and a fairly equal divide between the number of people calling Mark and Donghyuck their parents, and the number of people calling them their sons. 

 

One comment catches Donghyuck’s eye - it’s in Korean, and his eyes flick over and read it faster than he can decipher English. He reads it out, doesn’t bother to translate it - he found out ages ago that his viewers love hearing him speak Korean, even if they can’t understand him. There are even entire accounts on Twitter dedicated to posting translations of when he does speak his native language. It makes his heart swell so big he thinks he might actually die.

 

“ _ Hyung, what did you do to bribe him into this _ ?”

 

“ _ Oh, who’s that _ ?” Mark answers him back in Korean, and the comment is immediately washed away as the viewers absolutely lose it. There’s suddenly a dozen keyboard smash comments filling the screen, countless heart emojis, overzealous uses of the phrase ‘I’m crying’, and all they did was switch languages. 

 

“ _ I don’t know, it’s gone _ ,” Donghyuck whines, trying to scroll back to it, but it’s lost. “ _ Comment again _ !” He directs it to the camera.

 

“ _ Comment again _ ,” Mark mirrors him, carefully prying open an eyeshadow palette and looking incredibly freaked out at the literal rainbow of colours he finds inside.  _ “What time is it in Korea _ ?”

 

Donghyuck trains his eyes on the comments carefully, waiting. He jumps at a few Korean comments, but they’re just translation app copy-and-pastes of ‘ _ hello _ ’ and ‘ _ I love you _ ’. Until - 

 

‘ _ Tell Mark-hyung it’s six in the morning here _ ’, and the username reads ‘dancersung02’.

 

“It was Jisungie,” Donghyuck tells Mark, who’s curiously examining a pencil of clear lip liner. “He says it’s six in the morning.”

 

“ _ Jisung-ah _ ,” Mark chastises. “ _ Go back to sleep _ .”

 

“ _ Jisung-ah _ !” Donghyuck shouts. “ _ Post another cover! Your channel has been inactive for two months and people think you’re dead. _ ”

 

Mark chuckles. “You guys remember our friend Jisung, right? The little dancer?” He asks the camera. “Yeah, update, he’s not dead, he’s just lazy about filming. You should kick his ass, spam his comment section.”

 

Donghyuck’s phone pings from where it’s tucked into the pocket of his sweats, the distinct sound of a KakaoTalk notification. He guesses Jisung gave up on commenting, but as he’s fishing it out, another notification pings through, and Jisung really isn’t the type to double text.

 

“He’s texting Duckie to give you guys excuses now,” Mark laughs. He twists open the lid of a loose powder, sniffs it, and makes a face, mumbling something about it smelling weird.

 

Donghyuck fishes his phone out, swipes open Kakao. “Oh, it’s not just Jisung.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah, it’s Jaemin too.”

 

“Tell them both the go back to bed, oh my god.” 

 

“You’re not their mother.” Donghyuck laughs. “Jisung says,  _ tell Mark-hyung I broke my camera _ .”

 

“ _ Well, Jisung, why did you do that _ ?” Mark scoffs. “Broke his camera, he says,” Mark translates fluidly for the viewers. “Honestly, guys.  _ And what about Jaemin _ ?”

 

Jaemin’s text has Donghyuck blushing, which isn’t easy to do, if you aren’t Mark. Apparently he’s watching the stream too, if the call out he’s sent to Donghyuck is anything to go by.

 

‘ _ I thought this video was about Mark-hyung doing your makeup _ ’, the text reads. ‘ _ But instead you two are just sitting there making us all feel pathetic about our own love lives _ .’

 

“ _ He’s just being grouchy, he hasn’t had his morning coffee yet _ .” Donghyuck tells Mark instead, making him chuckle. 

 

He sits back, stretching out his shoulders. “So, uh,” Mark stares at the camera lens, then turns to Donghyuck. “What do I start with?”

 

Donghyuck smiles at him, slow and intentionally sinister this time. He shrugs, pointedly. Mark gapes at him for a moment, eyes wide.

 

Donghyuck’s phone pings again - another text from Jaemin. ‘ _ Respond to Jeno’s comments, he feels left out _ .’ Donghyuck rolls his eyes, muttering “ _ honestly, you two call me married _ ,” too softly for the camera to pick up, but Mark hears it, makes a questioning sound. 

 

“Jeno,” Donghyuck explains, tugging the laptop closer again, and scrolling through, looking for a channel name he knows by heart. “Jaemin says Jeno’s commenting.”

 

Lo and behold, from the user ‘norenmin_gaymes’ - Donghyuck had come up with that beauty of a username himself - there’s a comment that reads ‘ _ What kind of public display of affection bullshit is this stream _ ’.

 

“ _ Jeno, don’t swear at me, I’m a baby _ .” Donghyuck replies easily, shoves the laptop away.

 

“ _ Jeno, I’ll call Dongyoung-hyung and wake him up if I have to. _ ” Mark threatens. In one hand he holds three different eyeshadow palettes, and in the other there is - thankfully - a face primer, that he’s squinting to read. He seems to be at a toss up between which to start with.

 

Another text pings through, again from Jaemin. ‘Snitch’, it says. In English. Donghyuck laughs, pouts mockingly at the camera. 

 

Mark sighs loudly, like his whole life is a chore, dumping the make up in his hands back on the desk. Donghyuck’s haphazard sorting has been reduced to dust. “I’m starting with eyeshadow.” He declares loudly, and Donghyuck’s skin starts to itch.

 

“Are you… sure? About that?” He’s trying not to guide him, he’s not allowed to help, this is Mark’s challenge and he can’t coach him through it. But it hurts, it  _ burns _ , that Mark plans to swipe glitter over his uncovered eye bags.

 

“Yeah, I think so.” Mark picks a palette - one of Donghyuck’s favourites, though he suspects Mark only knows that because there are multiple shades that have hit pan. “You do, don’t you?”

 

Well,  _ yes _ , admittedly, Donghyuck  _ does _ start with eyeshadow sometimes, when it’s a darker, heavier look, but he honestly doesn’t trust Mark’s fumbling fingers to have the precision necessary to apply foundation around his eyes -  _ after _ the shadow is already done - without ruining it. But this is Mark’s challenge, and even if it makes his skin crawl, Donghyuck just has to sit back and take it.  _ For the views _ , he thinks.

 

“Okay.” Donghyuck says, leaves it at that.

 

“ _ Okay _ !” Mark drags it out in that signature way of his, boyish and confident. He’s faking it. Donghyuck can see his leg bouncing nervously. He cracks open the palette, faced with a dozen pink toned eyeshadows, flicks his eyes over the colours, and does nothing.

 

“Base colour?” Mark asks. “I hear you say that a lot. I don’t know what that is.”

 

“Typical.” Donghyuck scoffs toward the camera lens. “He listens, but he doesn’t really  _ hear me _ , ladies, am I right?”

 

“Donghyuck, literally shut up.” Mark laughs. He starts flicking through the jar of brushes. “Uh, do I have to use all of these? Or do you have like,” he glances up, chewing on his lip. “Like a favourite, or something?”

 

“For a base colour? Yeah, I do.” Donghyuck says absently, back to scrolling through the comments on the stream. It’s primarily a continuous spattering of ‘couple goals’ and ‘you guys are so cute omg please get married’. He comes across one that says ‘oh my god mark literally doesn’t know shit’, and he snorts. 

 

“Which one is it?” Mark tries.

 

“I don’t know, Mark Lee.” Donghyuck raises a coquettish eyebrow. “Which one is it?”

 

Mark rolls his eyes. “I’m actually going to  _ try _ to do a good job, you know. I’m actually  _ trying _ , do you see this?” He directs it to the viewers.

 

“Pick a brush and stop stalling!” Donghyuck punctuates his cry by slapping the table a couple of times. “We’ve been streaming for like ten minutes and I’m still bare faced and it’s doing  _ terrible _ things for my confidence.”

 

“Don’t be stupid,” Mark grumbles. He snatches a brush completely at random, and Donghyuck isn’t even surprised that his lucky streak extends to picking a decent brush to start with - it’s round and fluffy, small enough to have some precision on Donghyuck’s eyelids. It’s not even dirty, like most of his brushes are. He holds it completely wrong, way too far up the handle, and oddly like a pencil.

 

“You don’t need make up to be beautiful, Duckie.” Mark says, and Donghyuck feels his ears heating up.

 

“Shut  _ up _ ,” he whines, turning his chair to face Mark, trying to get the ball rolling. At least the new position allows him to hide at least half his face from the camera. “Do my makeup, loser.”

 

Mark snorts, adjusts his grip on the brush so that he’s still holding it incorrectly. “ _ I love you too _ ,” he mutters, and Donghyuck is grateful he has the good grace to hide that by saying it in Korean. They lock eyes for a moment, and for all the hard times that Donghyuck puts him through, he knows that Mark is fully aware that he loves him back, just as much. He’s just not all that used to having an audience for it. He usually edits out moments like this, but on a stream, he doesn’t have the luxury, and everyone is privy to just how absolutely fucking  _ in love _ with Mark he is.

 

Everybody, including their awful friends, and Donghyuck’s phone pinging again snaps them out of the moment. They glance down as the screen lights up, another text from Jaemin: ‘ _ Are you saying your vows or doing his eyeshadow, what is this? _ ’

 

“Yeah, okay,” Mark laughs. “Okay, can you just,” he gestures, waving his hands downward. “Close your eyes and like, pray?”

 

Donghyuck laughs off the moment too, before sobering up and nodding solemnly, staring dead at Mark while making the sign of the cross over his body. He barely gets past tapping his chest when Mark rolls his eyes and huffs at him. Donghyuck giggles, shuts his eyes, and leans in for Mark to do his worst.

 

“Okay,” Mark mutters, and Donghyuck can hear that he’s leaned in too. He settles a warm palm against the back of Donghyuck’s neck, holding him steady. “Okay, I’m just going to -”

 

There’s a gentle sensation against Donghyuck’s eyelid, but it’s not a brush. Well, it  _ is _ , but it’s not a makeup brush, it’s the gentle brush of Mark’s lips against his lid, swiping across his brow bone.

 

“What -”

 

“It’s just,” Mark kisses his other eye, his breath washing across Donghyuck’s cheek. “It’s for good luck, okay?”

 

Donghyuck stifles a giggle, pretends like his heart isn’t doing backflips. He doesn’t even want to check how the comment section is doing after  _ that _ , especially when he can feel the blood rushing up to his cheeks  _ again _ , and Mark  _ still _ hasn’t put on his damn foundation.

 

“Kisses aren’t a replacement for eyeshadow primer, Mark Lee.”

 

“What the  _ hell _ is eyeshadow primer?” Mark sounds like he slams the brush onto the table, sending it clattering amongst the products. Donghyuck opens his eyes to see him tugging a frustrated hand through his hair, staring at the clutter on the table as if it’s going to offer him any more help than Donghyuck already isn’t. “Where is it?”

 

“It’s in there!” Donghyuck says, bubbly. “Somewhere.”

 

Mark sighs. “Do I need it? Like, Duckie, honestly prioritize here, do I  _ need _ it? I don’t even know what it does and you won’t tell me.”

 

“You know what face primer does and you were going to use that!”

 

“I really don’t!” Mark picks up the bottle of primer. “This says ‘smoothing face base’, your face is already smooth! It’s so smooth! You,” he gestures wildly. “You  _ exfoliate _ , or something. You  _ literally _ don’t need it!”

 

“Think of my  _ pores _ ,” Donghyuck moans.

 

“Every day!” Mark cries, turning back to the camera, giggling. “I hear that  _ every day _ , I swear. I kiss his cheek, he whines ‘ _ think of my pores _ ’, I wipe sauce off his face when he eats chicken wings, and does he thank me? No! All I get is ‘ _ think of my pores _ ’!” He’s outright laughing by now, barely able to speak between heaving breaths. Donghyuck shrieks beside him, slapping at his shoulder, eyes tearing up as he laughs.

 

“Quit it!” He chokes on his laughter. “Can you just,” he grabs at the discarded eyeshadow brush, forces it into Mark's hand where he’s clutching his own chest and heaving with laughter. “Do something already?”

 

Mark takes a deep, shaky breath. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

 

“ _ Okay _ .” Donghyuck mocks, watching him pick up the palette again. “For real this time?”

 

“Yeah,” Mark is still fighting down a grin as he scoots himself back into position. “Yeah, for real this time. I'm just  _ nervous _ , okay?”

 

“Why?”

 

Mark pouts, waves his hands and their contents around like the answer is obvious. “I'm not going to do  _ well _ , baby. It's going to suck and I just,” he huffs. “You don't deserve to look ugly just because I'm bad at this.”

 

It’s such a small thing to say, but Donghyuck can see the intention behind it, clear in Mark’s eyes. Mark knows how much he loves this, all his powders and glitters and colours, and he wants to treat it with respect, wants to take this silly little challenge seriously, to some degree. Donghyuck’s heart swells, tightening in his chest.

 

And then his phone pings again, disturbing the moment,  _ again _ . Mark glances down. “ _ Jaemin says we're being disgusting _ .” 

 

“ _ Fuck off, Jaemin. _ ”

 

“ _ I’ll call Dongyoung-hyung on you too. _ ” Mark threatens, empty and giggling.

 

“ _ I’ll call Johnny-hyung and tell him you’re such a coward you won’t even do my makeup for a damn video. _ ” 

 

“Hey now, let’s be reasonable,” Mark laughs. “I’m doing it! Okay, look, I’m doing it.” And he really does, dunks the brush into a pale metallic rose shade, and doesn’t tap off any excess. Donghyuck has the clench his jaw to keep from ordering him to.

 

“Then do it,” he says, roughly scooting his chair closer to Mark and closing his eyes, satisfied that Mark understands by now that he’s got no other choice.

 

“ _ I’m so sorry, baby, _ ” Mark mutters, and finally,  _ finally _ Donghyuck feels the tentative stroke of the brush against his eyelid, Mark’s hand shaky and gentle, a single stroke from inner to outer corner. It's sweet, honestly it is, how Donghyuck can hear that he's holding his breath, how careful he's obviously being to not handle Donghyuck's face too roughly. He's just - he's just so  _ sweet _ , Donghyuck can feel his heartbeat in the tips of his fingers, it’s pounding so loudly for Mark.

 

Mark manages a couple more strokes over the same eyelid, a rudimentary attempt at blending, and Donghyuck aches to tell him about small circular motions. 

 

“Good?” Mark asks, hopeful, and Donghyuck flutters his eyes open. Mark has somehow wedged himself even closer, spreading his legs to frame Donghyuck’s knees so he can shuffle to the edge of his chair and right up to him. He’s bouncing one knee again, and biting his lip, and Donghyuck takes pity on the poor boy he loves and the way he’s nervously picking at the sweater paw of his free hand.

 

“Felt alright,” he says, with a small smile. “Do the other.”

 

Mark nods, and Donghyuck closes his eyes, feels the process repeat across his other eye.

 

“Do I need a new brush for a new colour?” Marks asks, and that’s where the pity ends.

 

“Maybe,” Donghyuck shrugs, watches Mark huff. “Depends on the colour.”

 

“I think you used this one?” Mark points to a deeper shade of glitter, a warm cranberry shade. 

 

“Used it  _ when _ ?” Donghyuck demands. “Oh my  _ God _ , are you - are you actually trying to redo one of my looks?”

 

“Shut up.” Mark snaps, ears red. He pushes his glasses up his face using his entire fist to try and hide the blush crawling across his cheekbones. “You told me to, shut up, yes I am, don’t  _ look _ at me like that!”

 

Donghyuck’s face is split into the widest grin he’s worn all day, all  _ week _ even. “What look?” He grabs at Mark’s arm, shakes him violently. “From what video?”

 

“Not a video,” Mark grumbles. “It was, uh. Not too long ago? It was before we moved.” He steadfastly refuses to look Donghyuck in the eyes, he’s so embarrassed, Donghyuck is  _ living _ . “We went on that trip, before we left, to Jeju, yeah? To your old hometown, from when you lived there, spent a few days, do you remember? We took the ferry there, the early morning one, it was sunrise and you - you sat on the deck and watched the water and -” he cuts himself off with an embarrassed cough.

 

Of course Donghyuck remembers. He laugh shrilly, shaking Mark by the shoulder again. “And  _ what _ , Mark Lee? Huh?” He bats his eyelashes in the direction of the camera. “Was a beautiful in the sunlight? Am I etched in your memory forever, my pink eyeshadow and marvellous skin illuminated by daybreak? Hm? And  _ what _ ?”

 

“And you were  _ quiet _ for once, oh my god,  _ Duckie _ .” He’s chuckling, but still blushing furiously, trying to shove Donghyuck off. “You had pink eyeshadow and you watched the water and you shut up and it was  _ great _ .”

 

“I think I was seasick, actually.” Donghyuck recalls. He starts scrolling through comments again, absorbing all the love and energy. He spies a couple that encourage Mark - ‘the pink looks great mark good choice’ - and some from viewers that must be new, didn’t see Donghyuck’s Jeju vlog from that day - ‘oh my god you went on vacation together I’m’ - it cuts off in a keysmash. 

 

Buried in between the adorable spam of comments from his regular viewers, Donghyuck sees Jeno and Jisung firing off at each other. A comment comes through from ‘dancersung02’ that says ‘@norenmin_gaymes  _ hyung they’re talking about their honeymoon again _ ’. A few seconds later, Jeno comments back ‘@dancersung02  _ yes I know, avert your eyes Jisungie’ _ . Donghyuck rolls his eyes.

 

“Do you want a tip?” He offers Mark.

 

“ _ Please _ .” 

 

“I used three different palettes for the eyeshadow look I wore that day.”

 

“I’m not even attempting that,” Mark says immediately. “I’m absolutely  _ not _ doing that, oh my god, Duckie,  _ three palettes _ , what the hell? You get these two colours from this one and that’s it.”

 

“I used seven colours.”

 

“How do you even fit seven colours on one eyelid?” Mark aggressively jabs the brush into the dark pink glitter he’d pointed at, picking up way too much and  _ not tapping off the excess _ . “I covered your whole eyelid with one colour, there’s no room for more.”

 

“Blending.” Also, Donghyuck has a lower lash line that Mark, it seems, has forgotten about entirely, and there’s usually no less than three colours down there, but Donghyuck fears for Mark’s sanity if he breaks  _ that _ news to him.

 

“I can’t - just - close your eyes.”

 

Donghyuck hums, turning away from the laptop again. He feels Mark come closer, feels him suck his breath in to hold it, feels him reach up to cradle his jawline before there’s a tentative tap of the brush toward the outer corner of his eye, and then Mark swears loudly.

 

Donghyuck snatches his phone off the table immediately, swiping open his contact page and pulling open Dongyoung’s information, hovering his thumb over the ‘call’ button.

 

“No!” Mark shouts, knocking Donghyuck’s phone back onto the tabletop. “No, I just -” he swears again, quieter - “I messed up,  _ ugh _ , it’s too dark, there’s too much, I messed up.” He sighs. “I’m  _ sorry _ .” And he really does look remorseful.

 

Donghyuck snorts. “Blend,” he says, knows exactly how little that advice will help him.

 

Mark rolls his eyes, but he still looks stressed. He gestures for Donghyuck to close his eyes again, makes a few more of those soft tapping motions over his outer corner before switching over to the other eye. He makes a small, disgruntled noise, and Donghyuck feels him make weird swiping motions outwards, alternating between eyes, like he’s trying to wing out the shadow, but has no idea what he’s doing.

 

“I have no idea what I’m doing.” Mark mutters. Donghyuck flutters his eyes open.

 

“You’re doing great, sweetie.”

 

Mark drops the brush, sighs, and tugs at his own hair. “You look like you have glittery pink eye.”

 

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

 

“It’s not.” Mark says. “It looks so bad. It looks  _ so _ bad.” He cups Donghyuck’s chin with his hands, apologies written all over his face. “It looks nothing like I remember,  _ damn it _ , Duckie, I’m sorry.”

 

Donghyuck stares into Mark’s eyes, and really, it is okay. It is fine. Mark has put all of one product on his face thus far and already thinks he’s royally screwed up his face, and it’s okay, because Mark is still looking in his eyes like he’s the most beautiful boy he’s ever seen.

 

Mark lays a soft kiss between his eyebrows - eyebrows that Donghyuck knows deep in his soul will go unshaped and unfilled today. “It’s bad but I don’t know how to fix it so I’m moving on.”

 

“Okay,” Donghyuck giggles. “It’s your makeup look, do what you want.”

 

“I  _ want _ ,” Mark takes a deep breath. “To  _ not _ do eyeliner.”

 

“That’s fine.” That’s not fine.

 

“I know you always do that, like,” Mark motions at the outer corner of Donghyuck’s eye. “Little flick thing, but I think I’ll blind you if I try and I’m already doing enough damage.”

 

“I’ll make you a deal.” Donghyuck offers him, and winks conspiratorially at the camera.

 

“I never like your deals.”

 

“You can skip eyeliner,” Donghyuck entices. “But you have to do mascara instead.”

 

Mark stares into the camera like he’s on The Office. “In exchange for not doing one awful thing,” he says. “I can instead do a different, but also awful thing.”

 

“You have to do one, I  _ insist _ .”

 

“What’s the consensus, guys?” Mark asks the camera, pulling the laptop close to him. “What’s easier, doing eyeliner or mascara?” He waits for a few breaths, eyes skimming over the comments.

 

“I feel like this is cheating?” Donghyuck gripes, but he’s also cheating, rolling away across the table some mascaras he hated but just never got rid of, pulling closer some of his favourites. He spies one that he knows will throw Mark for a loop, smirks quietly and nudges it closer to where his boyfriend is still reading comments.

 

“They say mascara.” Mark declares, just like Donghyuck knew they would, and  _ oh, yes _ , he picks up that sleek black tube with the flared base and the black rose design inside the handle. 

 

“ _ Also _ ,” Mark adds, shrouded in Korean, “ _ Jeno said it would just be easier to break up with you rather than try either _ .”

 

“ _ Your hands are shaking, so _ ,” Donghyuck shrugs, giggling. “ _ He’s probably right. That sounds more like something Renjun would say, though _ .”

 

Mark hums, shaking the mascara. Why is he shaking the mascara? Donghyuck can’t even fathom. “ _ They do share that account, it might have been Junnie _ .”

 

“ _ Call Taeyong-hyung and sound upset and we can get them both in trouble for it _ .”

 

“ _ Sometimes I like how you think _ .” Mark grins conspiratorially, starts twisting the cap off the mascara. Donghyuck shoots the camera a wink before - 

 

“Oh, my God,  _ what _ ?” Mark tries aggressively to pull the twisted wand out of the tube.

 

“Careful,” Donghyuck warns. “That’s expensive.”

 

“Expensive and for  _ what _ ?” Mark wiggles the wand free, stares incredulously at the curve of it. “Duckie, this just isn’t practical.” 

 

Donghyuck’s geek-out instinct kicks in. “It’s curved to counteract the tilt of your wrist when you apply it yourself, see?” He tries to demonstrate by forcing Mark to mime putting it on himself, but he just jerks his head away like the wand is radioactive. “And it’s twisted so that when you pull it out of the tube, it mixes the formula inside, so it stays fresh, I’ve had this tube for  _ months  _ and it still applies like the first day I got it.”

 

Mark stares blankly at him. “This is for eyelashes, right? That’s what mascara is?”

 

Donghyuck’s face falls, and he sighs, defeated. “Yeah,” he leans in close again. “Paint my lashes.”

 

Mark reaches forward, tentative, making weird upward swiping motions as he gets closer to Donghyuck’s eyes. He catches the very tips of his lashes, leaving behind weird shiny black clumps, catching just slightly on his browbone and no doubt leaving behind some little black speckles.

 

“Okay, other eye.” 

 

“Oh, come  _ on _ ,” Donghyuck whines. “You barely  _ touched _ my eyelashes.”

 

“If I get any closer I  _ will _ gouge out your retinas,” Mark doesn’t say it like a threat, but like it’s a genuine fear. “I said other eye, so I’m doing the other eye.” And he does, crosses his arm weirdly over his body and twists his wrist to get the wand at Donghyuck’s other eye, makes the same motions and leaves behind the same clumps and speckles.

 

“Remember when he said he was actually trying?” Donghyuck directs the dig at the camera. “I didn’t imagine that, right? He said he was trying?”

 

Mark resolutely ignores this, struggling to twist the curved wand back into the tube.

 

“That didn’t look like trying.” Donghyuck tries to goad him.

 

Mark rolls his eyes, but chuckles, softly. He leans in, the fastest he’s moved all morning, swipes a kiss on the very outer corner of Donghyuck’s eye. When he pulls back, there’s a small speck of wet mascara clinging to his lip. “That was me  _ trying _ to not injure your pretty eyes, Duckie. Okay?”

 

Donghyuck clenches his jaw, blush rising again. “Fine.  _ Acceptable _ , I guess.”

“Good. Good, okay,” Mark sighs, that ordeal finally over with. “Foundation next?”

 

“Sure.”

 

“ _ Sure _ .” Mark scoffs. “Where’s your cushion? Do you have a cushion?”

 

“I - what?” Donghyuck stutters. “Yeah, I have a cushion, but how do you -”

 

“I saw the girls in the studio back in Korea use these all the time, I know how they work.” He says, proud. He spies and grabs Donghyuck’s cushion, a pale pink circular package, popping open the top and slipping two fingers under the ribbon strap of the puff. Donghyuck takes a moment to be impressed.

 

“Right, well,” he says, and he scoots the laptop across the table so he can face Mark and read comments at the same time. “You know what you’re doing, I guess.”

 

“Aw,  _ yeah _ .” Mark grins dopily at the camera. “Guys, I  _ got this _ .” 

 

“He’s  _ got this _ ,” Donghyuck does a squeaky impersonation, skims over some comments as Mark pops open the small door to the foundation sponge, jamming the puff in way too lightly, somehow. “Two and a half years,” he answers one of the comments out loud.

 

Mark understands instantly, humming. “Our anniversary is August 24th.” He reaches in and pats the puff, barely, on Donghyuck’s forehead a couple times, before moving down his left temple.

 

Donghyuck is at a loss - Mark is doing exactly the opposite of what he expected, barely touching his face with the puff, no doubt leaving behind nothing but small feathery smudges of colour, and somehow that’s worse than his mental image of getting all but slapped with his own foundation puff. His cushion is a near perfect match to his skin tone, and Mark has always been convinced that Donghyuck is just imagining his blemishes, so he has no doubt that Mark can’t even see the cosmetic tragedy he’s tapping across Donghyuck’s face.

 

Donghyuck spies a comment that says ‘hyuckie baby why did you let him do this to you’.

 

“Easy!” Mark goes to put the puff back into the case after all of maybe  _ twenty _ barely-there grazes of the puff on Donghyuck’s face - god, he didn’t even  _ try _ to cover the redness in the corners of his nose - until Donghyuck makes a strangled noise, desperate.

 

“My eye bags,” he begs. “Please cover my dark circles.”

 

“How about, instead, you sleep more?” Mark fires back.

 

“That’s rich, coming from  _ you _ .” Donghyuck abandons the laptop, grabs forcefully at Mark’s wrists. “I can’t sleep because you  _ sing _ in your damn  _ sleep _ , Mark Lee. Cover my bags.”    

 

Mark scoffs, but sheepishly does what he’s told, reaching in and barely,  _ just _ barely grazes it under Donghyuck’s eyes as he looks upwards, until he mutters:

 

“I’m going to smudge glitter all over the puff like this.”

 

Donghyuck levels him with a pointed look, waiting until he gets it.

 

“Oh.” Mark says flatly. The tips of his ears flare red. “I did this in the wrong order.”

 

“Yes.” It wasn’t a question, but Donghyuck answers, just as flat.

 

“Okay, whatever! Done with that, then!” Mark shrugs off the failure, snapping the puff back into the cushion’s packaging and diving his hand back into the clutter in search of something. “In most of your videos, which I  _ do  _ watch, thank you, you use…” He paws around for a moment, until latching onto a sleek matte black compact. “This one!”

 

Donghyuck wiggles shyly, smiling into the camera lens. “Yeah, and what is it?”

 

“I, uh, I don’t know.” Mark flips over the compact, squints at the back. “‘Sun wash diffusing bronzer’, oh!” Mark reads off the packaging, then immediatly perks up. “Bronzer, yeah, I know what that is, you do use that a lot.”

 

Donghyuck’s heart threatens to beat right out of his chest. “Yeah,” he mutters softly. “I do.”

 

“Aw,  _ yeah _ .” Mark wiggles proudly in his seat. “You use, like, a big brush and wipe it -” Donghyuck’s eye twitches, moment of loving weakness forgotten,  _ wipe it _ , honestly? Ridiculous “- all over, and it like, makes your face warm, or something.”

 

“You know what, Mark? That’s great,” Donghyuck praises him, just barely. “That’s so close to being almost right, I’ll just be nice and tell you that it is.”

 

“Charitable of you, honestly.” Mark glares at him, only for a moment and without any heat. “So it just, like, makes you look more tan?”

 

“It makes your skin  _ glowy _ and  _ radiant _ , Mark Lee, yes.”

 

Mark tosses it. “Well, you don’t need that!”

 

“ _ What _ ?” Donghyuck squawks. “Yes I do!”

 

“Your face is warm enough, Duckie!” Mark argues. “You’ve got such a nice tan just  _ naturally _ .”

 

“Not  _ anymore _ .” Donghyuck pouts cutely at the camera, knows the viewers will love it, they always do. “It’s so rainy and cloudy here, all the time, ever since I moved I’ve gotten so much paler.” He squishes his own cheeks, watches in his peripheral as the comments light up with hearts. “I’ve lost all my sun-kissed glow.”

 

Mark huffs. “I’ll give you a different kind of kissed glow, yeah?”

 

And that’s all the warning Donghyuck gets before Mark is gently brushing the back of his hand against his cheekbone, pushing aside a stray curl in his bangs and landing a lingering kiss right atop his cheekbone. Donghyuck’s breath stutters, eyes fluttering a little as Mark winds his fingers into his hair and nuzzles his nose just under the cut of his jaw. He opens his mouth to make a snarky comment about the affection, but blood rushes to his face faster than the words can crawl up his throat, and Mark beats him to it anyways.

 

“See that?” He mumbles, pointing at their image on the laptop screen, the display of their stream. “You don’t even need me to put on blush, either.”

 

Donghyuck realizes, all at once, that Mark is doing this on purpose. He’s  _ never  _ like this, never so outwardly affectionate where others can see, especially not on camera - the love he has is something he saves only for Donghyuck to see. It’s not entirely because they’re shy, just that it’s  _ special _ , what they have is so special and important and  _ Donghyuck packed up his entire life just to stay by Mark’s side _ , and it’s part of each other they like to save, just for _ each other _ . To show all Donghyuck’s viewers, their watching friends, anyone in the world who could possibly click on the video just how special it is - the thought of it makes Donghyuck’s soul shake. To bare yourself so plainly is scary. 

 

Though, Donghyuck ponders for a moment, nothing has really been scary with Mark by his side. Not even the dozens,  _ hundreds _ of comments pouring in at once, blocks of heart emojis that disappear almost as soon as they appear, just to be replaced with more.

 

“Highlighter is next.” Mark tells the camera, and Donghyuck isn’t surprised he knows that step. It’s one he’s done before. Back in high school, in Korea, when Donghyuck’s makeup collection consisted of some soft shades of lip tint and a single BB cream, when he had dreams of the big glittery collections the vloggers he watched had, Mark had gifted him with something precious - a highlighter. A pan of pressed golden glitter, a small fan brush, and a small inkling of courage every time he brushed the glitter onto Donghyuck’s blushing cheekbones on the days when he was still too shy to do it himself.

 

Donghyuck thinks that’s when he fell in love.

Mark picks up the same highlighter he bought, all those years ago - a bigger pan of it, now that Donghyuck is an proud and  _ liberal _ user of highlighter - and the exact same fan brush with the pretty blue handle that Donghyuck has taken tender care of all these years.

 

“Yeah,” Donghyuck mumbles, and it sounds kind of choked. “Highlighter.”

 

Mark gives him a small smile. He’s blushing, just slightly, up the tips of his ears.

 

Another Kakao notification comes through on Donghyuck’s phone, and he opens it as Mark flicks open the compact. It’s Jisung again. ‘ _ Hyung, I have to go to dance practice now, I hope the stream goes well and it doesn’t take Mark five years to finish like it took him five years to confess to you! _ ’ Donghyuck rolls his eyes, keys back a teasing response about what a disrespectful brat he is.

 

“Do you see this?” Donghyuck shoves his phone under Mark’s nose. He watches as Mark’s eyes trace the words, then as he rolls his eyes too. “We didn’t raise him to be like this.”

 

“He’s wrong, you know?” Mark rubs the brush on the powder, then lightly dusts the product over Donghyuck’s cheekbones, this motion practiced and perfected.

 

“Oh?”

 

“Yeah,” Mark smirks. “It was at  _ least _ seven years.”

 

Donghyuck barks a laugh. “Tell them,” he challenges Mark, flaps his hand toward the camera. “Tell them about all the time you spent hopelessly in love with me.”

 

Mark chuckles, glances at the camera as if he forgot they had an audience. He dips his brush back in the highlighter, moves to Donghyuck’s other cheekbone.

 

“When I first laid eyes on Donghyuck,” he begins the story. “I knew, from that moment, he would be my mortal enemy.”

 

“ _ What? _ ’ Donghyuck yelps.

 

“Yup, I  _ hated _ this guy.” Mark laughs, carefully brushing glitter over his browbones now. “ _ So  _ loud.  _ So  _ annoying. Not funny  _ at all _ .”

 

“Liar!”

 

Mark continues as if Donghyuck hadn’t spoken. “But Chenle and Renjun liked him, Jisung likes Chenle, and Jaemin likes Jisung, and Renjun and Jeno like Jaemin, and Jeno was like, my only friend besides Johnny, who was older and didn’t go to our school, so,  _ tragically, _ ” Mark smiles, brushes glitter over the tip of his nose. “I had to tolerate him.”

 

Donghyuck slaps Mark’s thigh. “Skip to the part where you start liking me,” he demands.

 

“I still don’t like you,” Mark teases quietly, and he leans forward to kiss Donghyuck’s sparkly nose. Butterflies explode in Donghyuck’s stomach, the comment section explodes with hearts again, and Donghyuck’s phone explodes with texts.

 

From Jaemin, ‘ _ You two are so sweet it’s giving me cavities. I’ll be faxing over my dental bill. _ ’

 

From Jisung, ‘ _ Don’t be silly, hyung. I know you love me. Not as much as you love Mark-hyung, though! _ ’ Followed by a slew of crying emojis, that fraud, he never even liked Donghyuck doting on him.

 

A new one, from Chenle, ‘ _ It’s great that you two are so in love! It’s even better that it’s in another country and I don’t have to see it with my bare eyes! _ ’

 

And another, from Jaemin, ‘ _ When you visit, do it separately. I might have to excommunicate you from the group chat if I have to see this in real life. Do not force my hand _ .”

 

Their friends are supportive like that.

 

Mark is still leaning close to his face, smiling dopily at him. “Does it look good?” Donghyuck asks softly.

 

“No,” Mark says. “Absolutely not. I’m terrible at this. But,” he slides his arms around Donghyuck’s waist, leans his forehead onto Donghyuck’s. “You look beautiful no matter what. If anyone can make it work, it’s you.”

 

Donghyuck pouts, lips dangerously close to Mark’s, heart hammering out of his chest. “I still need lipstick, Mark Lee.”

 

“Oh, of course, how silly of me.” Mark makes no move to actually pick a lipstick from the dozens of tubes. Instead, he reaches up, cradles Donghyuck’s jaw in a gentle palm. “Let me just clean the foundation off, yeah?” And he starts leaning in.

 

“Actually, you’re done!” Donghyuck announces, tearing himself from Mark’s grasp. “It looks great! Stream’s over guys, thank you  _ so _ much for tuning in as always, I’ll be back later this week with my new upload so look out for -”

 

“ _ Hey, _ ” Mark interrupts, drawn out, boyish, so inescapably  _ Mark _ that Donghyuck feels like he’s suffocating on his love. “I don’t think I’m done, you said I still have -”

 

“Nope!” Donghyuck shouts. He’s blushing so hard that it actually  _ burns _ . “Finished! Thank you for watching,” he snatches the laptop and hovers the cursor over the button that will cut the stream. He catches one last comment from ‘norenmin_gaymes’: ‘ _ I threw up multiple times watching this, it was awful, delete your account, come home soon I miss you guys so much _ .’

 

“My Twitter and Mark’s SoundCloud are linked below! Bye, love you all!” He shrieks, hurriedly blowing his signature loud kiss and wink, panicking as he feels Mark nestle closer into his side, leaning his head onto his shoulder. He holds his breath until the webpage changes, announcing the stream is over and beginning to auto-upload the recording, and the red recording light on the camera shuts off.

 

He huffs, turning to Mark, who’s smirking. 

 

“Hey,” Mark says. “You wake me up, drag me out of bed, make me do your makeup when you  _ know _ I don’t know a damn thing, and you think I’m not going to make life just a  _ little bit _ hard for you?” He gets up and ruffles Donghyuck’s hair before landing a kiss on his crown. “No way. You get so shy sometimes, it’s funny to see you squirm.”

 

“Mark Lee, you are the  _ worst _ .”

 

Mark laughs, already sauntering out of the room and, undoubtedly back to their bedroom. Donghyuck hears the faint  _ whump _ sound of his body dropping back onto the bed.

 

He pulls his mirror through the clutter toward him, getting a good look at himself for the first time since the stream started. Mark’s not wrong, necessarily: it really  _ isn’t _ good, not by Donghyuck’s high standards for his makeup. The foundation is barely on, eyeshadow smudged in places it doesn’t belong, his lips are crusty looking, smeared in foundation. There are small dots of mascara across his eyelid and browbone where Mark had missed.

 

But Mark is right - if anyone can make it work, it’s him. It’s  _ them _ . Whether it’s a well-intended, poorly executed face of makeup, an intercontinental move, a  _ life _ together: as long as it’s them, as long as they have each other, they can make it work.

  
Donghyuck can hear Mark already mumbling in his sleep again. It’s annoying. He loves him  _ so _ much.

**Author's Note:**

> edit 190608 thank you for reading! i'm becca!! you can come find me here on [twitter](http://twitter.com/peek_a_kyungboo) and my brand new [cc](http://curiouscat.me/yourobdtst), come say hi! :)


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